Surprising location of most expensive home in the US

Neil Vigdor

Updated 1:35 pm, Saturday, May 18, 2013

"The Great Gatsby" never lived so large.

A 50-acre compound on the Greenwich waterfront with a pair of private islands, a driveway longer than most highway interchanges and a 19th century French Victorian mansion with as many bedrooms as there are days of Christmas hit the market Friday at an other-worldly $190 million.

Not only is the listing a record for Greenwich, where an 80-acre horse farm fetched $45 million in 2004, it is believed to be the most expensive listing currently in the entire United States.

Copper Beach Farm, as the compound is known, boasts a carriage house with a clock tower, co-joined heptagonal pools, a greenhouse, wine cellar and Wimbledon-like grass tennis court.

David Ogilvy & Associates, a Greenwich affiliate of Christie's International Real Estate, took out a two-page spread in Friday's newspaper trumpeting the compound as "the one and only 50-acre waterfront estate in Greenwich."

The last time a property of its size with Long Island Sound frontage in Greenwich came on the market was 1952, according to Ogilvy, who said he already has several inquiries from prospective buyers.

Forty-five of the property's 50 acres are assessed as forestland by the town, which gives tax discounts for open space.

The property's assessment is $15 million, which is 70 percent of its $21.3 million full-market value.

Without the discount, the property would be assessed at $59.2 million, putting its full-market value at $84.6 million.

In 2010, the Round Hill Road manor of the late hotelier Leona Helmsley sold at a steep discount from its original 2008 asking price of $125 million. The 28-room Dunnellen Hall mansion sold for $35 million and relisted for $42.9 million in 2011, only to be delisted six months later.

Ogilvy was also the listing agent for an 80-acre estate in Conyers Farm with a main house, four guest houses, a 22-stall horse stable and servants' quarters that hit the market at $53 million. It eventually sold for $45 million.

Mel Gibson sold his Old Mill Farm estate for $24 million in 2010, well off the $39.5 million original asking price from 2007.

Most of the larger estates that come on the market in Greenwich are in the backcountry, north of the Merritt Parkway.